Sunday, May 22, 2011

Dead Space

Just finished Dead Space today, and I'm not sure how this game slipped under my radar until the horrible yourmomwillhatethis.com promotion for the sequel. A short time in, while i was still fiddling with the controls, i was staring at a door and saw what I think was a shadow from behind me. I spun around, carefully searched the hallway... waited a little longer just in case. The game had me already.

Dead Space did two new (to me) things in particular that I really liked. The first was the mapping function. Push R3, and a little blue line will appear on the floor telling me where to go next. Now that's convenience.

The second thing was the zero-g sections of the game. You walk into a zero g area, aim at any direction in the area with a flat surface... and jump. Ceiling has just become the ground. They should make a whole game around this, something a bit more puzzley.

The only problem with zero-g is if there happen to be enemies in the same area. Suddenly something's shooting at me, and I'm spinning around all over the place trying to figure out where the hell it's coming from. There is an amazingly simple solution to this. Give me a button that will automatically point me in the direction that the last attack came from, and we can all be happy.

One annoying thing did happen to me, a bit of a flaw in the gameplay.... there are some areas with no oxygen and you have a very limited air supply. My air was running low, so I was high-tailing it to free breathing. Now, sometimes, you come to a door that takes a few seconds to open as the next area of the game is loaded. On the other side of this particular door was my oxygen, and we hit a little bit of load lag. No problem, still have a little more than ten seconds left... hmm, still lagging... five... four... three... you've got to be kidding me.

About the only other criticism that might be levelled at this game is that the story felt a little too familiar at times... but when I'm completely immersed in a game, that's just a nitpick. 5/5 stars for this game from me.

I see that there are a direct-to-video prequel and sequel to this game, and a Wii rail shooter, all of which I'll probably be enjoying on the path to playing Dead Space 2 sometime in the future. But I have a lot of other games ahead in the line right now.

Right now I'm tearing into Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions... also trying to get through Mass Effect 1 on pc before I play mass effect 2 on my ps3, but I'm just haven't been feeling the whole PC gaming vibe lately. I also want to turn my attention back to Fallout: New Vegas and finish that... when I heard a new patch was coming I decided it was time to take a break from that game. And when I can get my mits on my Wii, I'm also wanting to continue Super Mario Galaxy 2. And once I send Dead Space back to Gamefly, I'll have YET ANOTHER game landing in my lap.. probably Assassin's Creed 2, so that I can beat that and move on to playing AC: Brotherhood with one of my friends. Very much a completist and don't like playing things out of order. :) And of course, I'm still jumping into games of Black Ops when I see friends online... and at some point I want to play the single player campaign in Black Ops, since I was blown away by the Modern Warfare single player campaigns. No shortage of good stuff right now, and if Green Lantern defies the odds and produces a good video game tie-in, everything else will be on hold... because it's Green Lantern!

Dead Space was a great game, took my until around last September to finally play it, but i was amazed. It reminded me of Bioshock 1 in that it came out of nowhere and blew my mind. It was engaging, never really overly difficult, had great mechanics, and just had a great setting and mood. Not to mention it was only single player, so it felt like the entire production was built for that, not trying to divide up the resources for multiplayer. I think that's something people dont understand sometimes about gaming. Everyone wants a multiplayer game, but if they're taking away talent that could be helping excel the single player story, sometimes it doesnt more harm than good. Unless its coop, not every game needs a multiplayer mode. And on that, how great would have Dead Space been if it was coop. Share the scares with a buddy online.